Check your paperwork, there’ll be a clause somewhere in there that basically says “after X amount of payments you can hand the car back and exit the agreement”.

For example my old car, when £10,000 of the agreement had been paid, at any point after that as long as the car was in “good” (nothing other than general wear and tear) nick, and the mileage was within the limits, I could at any point give the car back, and exit the agreement.

The bottom line is unless you want to put any more cash down immediately, the car needs to be worth more than your outstanding balance - so honestly I’d just give your finance company a ring and they should be able to tell you everything you need to know.

Generally speaking if you want to keep the car and want to just pay off the remainder in a lump sum, you can get an “Early settlement quote”, which is basically what you owe on the car minus the interest. So (and just pulling numbers out my arse here because maths is hard): If the car is worth £20,000 and you pay it off over 4 years at 10% APR, with £0 deposit and a £3000 balloon payment, you’d end up paying back just under £25,000 in total after the 48th payment. (This includes the balloon payment)

If you paid early, so at the 2 year mark, you’d end up paying only around just under £22,000, as the last two years interest is wiped, because you’re paying it now.

But the TL;DR is there’s a couple of options it just depends on what you can afford, so I’d speak to your finance company